Another Work of Art!

Karen's heart gave a sudden thump. Then came a brief silence. Strangely enough, the person on the other end hadn't hung up either. "You're interrupting my artistic creation..." The words replayed rapidly in Karen's mind, echoing with the exact timbre and tone. Karen didn't think he had dialed the wrong number, nor did he believe someone was playing a prank. Still less could he be naive enough to think the other party was merely an artist practicing some traditional art inside a crematorium. Sometimes intuition truly mattered, sparing one all the trivial preliminaries and cutting straight to the heart of the matter. Though reason told him how bizarre and thoroughly absurd it was, after a short pause, Karen pinched his throat with the fingers of his right hand and said: "Then... do you need some worthwhile artistic advice?" "Oh?" The man uttered a sound of surprise, clearly not expecting such a response from whoever was on the line. Then he laughed. Karen listened to the laughter over the receiver—a man's laugh, faintly sinister and sharp. Karen continued: "Or are you actually not so confident in your art?" "You're amusing. What a pity. If you'd called a bit earlier, I would have gladly listened to your advice. But unfortunately, it won't do this time." "Why?" As he asked, Karen closed his eyes. It was a question whose answer was obvious without even asking. And the voice on the other end gave the exact answer Karen had anticipated: "Because my creation this time is already complete. All that's left are a few finishing touches, which has been troubling me a bit. Can you understand that kind of distress?" Karen replied, "When I was learning to paint as a child, my teacher would point out that a corner of my canvas was too empty and needed something to fill it—even if what I added had no direct connection to the rest of the painting and was added purely for the sake of adding it. And yet, that's precisely what's most tormenting." "Yes, exactly! That's the trouble! That's exactly where I am right now." "That's actually a sign of lacking skill," Karen said. "Which is why I never grew up to become a painter. Someone who can't even get their composition right before putting brush to canvas, who has to patch up gaps at the very end—what kind of painter is that? What kind of artist? How could they even speak of art?" After Karen said this, the breathing on the other end suddenly grew rapid. A psychiatrist knew how to soothe a person's emotions to avoid triggering a patient; by the same token, he naturally knew where to find the sore spots and was adept at pressing them. Karen continued: "You think you're an artist? No, you're not. You're just an arrogant, narcissistic fool. Please don't insult the word 'art.'" The sound of grinding teeth came through the receiver. Evidently, Karen's words had hit a nerve. Karen, holding the receiver, felt rather helpless himself. There was nothing he could do right now—he couldn't even call the police, since calling them required hanging up first to dial again. At the same time, he couldn't go down to the basement to find Aunt Mary or head upstairs to find his grandfather, because the telephone cord wasn't long enough. Shouting for someone... would definitely be overheard on the phone. The voice on the other end spoke: "I'm very disappointed in you. When we first started talking, I even thought for a moment that you might be someone God assigned to me who shared my aesthetic tastes. Sadly, you're not. "Perhaps it's because you're too young. "Your understanding of art is far too superficial. For art knows no hierarchy." Karen answered calmly: "But art does know levels of skill." *Slam!* The other party slammed the phone down with immense force. Karen put down the receiver as well. Frowning in bewilderment, he murmured: "How did he..." Karen released the fingers of his right hand. Because he had pinched his throat for so long, it ached, forcing him to rub it gently while coughing dryly a few times: "...know I was young?" That last sentence shifted from the previously raspy, low pitch back to Karen's original voice. ... *Knock, knock...* "Come in." The study door opened. Sitting behind the desk, Diss looked up at Karen standing in the doorway. "Grandfather." "What is it?" "Something seems to have happened at Hughes Crematorium." "How do you know?" "Because I just called them, and the person who answered seems to be the killer—the perverted murderer from the Crown Ballroom." His grandfather laid down his fountain pen and asked: "Did you call the police?" Karen shook his head. "Call the police," his grandfather suggested. Karen actually hadn't thought about calling the police, because the man on the phone had made it clear that his artwork was already finished. Which meant that if there was a victim, they were already dead. Call the police to collect a body? Karen felt there was little point, unless the killer broke his leg walking away from the crime scene just as a police car pulled up in front of him. "Are you worried it might be a prank?" his grandfather asked. "Don't worry. Even if it's a false alarm, it's just a small fine." Karen shook his head again. "Then what do you want to do?" "I want to go to Hughes Crematorium right now and take a look." To go see his new work. Diss picked up his teacup, took a sip, and gave a slight nod. "You may go. I give my permission." Karen still stood in the doorway, motionless. "Hm?" Diss set down his teacup. "What's wrong?" Karen licked his lips and said quite bluntly: "I'm scared to go alone." "Heh heh heh." Diss suddenly chuckled. "When you were little and scared to go to the washroom at night, that was what you said to me too." Suddenly, Diss fell silent, a trace of chagrin crossing his face. ... "What is it, my little Karen?" "Grandpa, it's dark. Washroom. Pee. I'm scared to go alone." "Then Grandpa will wait right here in the hallway while you go inside to relieve yourself, all right?" "Grandpa, come with me, come with me!" ... The taxi drove all the way from Mink Street to Hughes Crematorium on the outskirts. It was quite a distance, taking more than twice the time it had taken Karen to take a cab home from the Crown Ballroom. Arriving at the entrance of Hughes Crematorium, the taxi driver turned around, looked at Diss in the back seat, and said with a smile: "Hello, sir. That'll be forty-five lubi." Diss handed over a fifty-lubi note. The driver gave back five lubi in change, which Diss took. Then, grandfather and grandson got out of the car. Watching the taxi drive off, Karen muttered inwardly: *Fuck.* The crematorium's front doors were tightly shut. A battered motorcycle was parked outside, and strapped to the seat was a bundled-up quilt. A man and a woman stood nearby, looking extremely anxious. Inside the quilt was likely a body brought in for cremation. Yet on the crematorium's doors hung a "Closed" sign. "Excuse me, are you with the crematorium?" the woman stepped forward and asked. Karen shook his head. "No." Hearing this, the man angrily kicked a pebble in front of the door and cursed, "We clearly made an appointment yesterday! Why is it closed today? Absolutely shameless! Shameless!" "Maybe we should try another place," the woman suggested. "It's too late! It's almost dark. If we rush to another crematorium now, they'll definitely be closed too." "Has it not opened at all today?" Karen asked. "We've been waiting here since one o'clock!" the man said indignantly. Karen noticed the quilt on their motorcycle. A corner of it faintly revealed wisps of white hair; it was probably an elderly family member who had passed away. Those who could afford to arrange a funeral through the Inmeles family were never truly ordinary people, being mostly middle class. Even Mr. Mossan's children, whom Aunt Mary had complained about so many times, had cut back on numerous services, yet their total expenses still came out to several thousand lubi. Several thousand lubi was by no means a small sum for working-class families at the bottom. Meanwhile, welfare cases were reserved for those with no next of kin. Even if a family was dirt-poor and couldn't afford funeral expenses, so long as there were surviving relatives, they couldn't qualify for a welfare case like Jeff, because they weren't considered pitiful enough. Therefore, when the truly impoverished in Rojia City passed away, their families would bring them directly to the crematorium for cremation. Uncle Mason had once remarked that the clients the Inmeles family considered "shabby" were already high-end clientele in the eyes of a crematorium. Just then, an aged red Kaimen car drove up and stopped in front of the entrance. The door opened, and to Karen's surprise, out stepped Mrs. Hughes, dressed in a long blue dress with a brown down coat slipped over it. The very much "alive" Mrs. Hughes immediately broke into a smile upon seeing Karen, but as soon as she noticed Diss standing beside him, she instantly resumed a dignified posture. "Huh? Why is the door locked?" Mrs. Hughes walked up, murmuring in confusion as she retrieved a spare key from her handbag and unlocked the door. "Why are you only showing up now?!" the man beside them couldn't help pressing her. Mrs. Hughes glanced at him, then shifted her eyes to the motorcycle. "I don't know either. We only had two bookings scheduled for today—one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Mm, the afternoon one must be you. So I gave myself and another employee the day off, leaving only one senior worker on duty to mind the place. "If the owner of the cement plant up the road hadn't driven by, seen customers waiting outside, and called me, I wouldn't even have come. "Sigh, how strange. Did Old Darcy skip work today?" "I don't care what your crematorium's excuse is! I've been waiting here with my mother for—" "You're welcome to file a complaint against me with the city government, or go straight to the police station and report it. I've already explained it once. The right to complain is yours, but please keep your distance from me right now. This is a place where corpses are burned—believe it or not, I'll toss you into the incinerator along with them!" Faced with Mrs. Hughes's sudden aggression, the man was cowed and didn't dare say another word. A woman running a crematorium on her own for so many years certainly had a fierce edge to her; otherwise, she never could have kept it going all this time. "By the way, Mr. Diss, what brings you here today..." "My grandson wanted to come see you," Diss answered. Mrs. Hughes blinked. She dearly wanted to toss out some cheeky remarks to tease the handsome young lad of the Inmeles family, but she couldn't—Diss's presence was simply too overwhelming. It was no wonder Mary always let slip her deep awe and fear of her father-in-law during their ladies' gatherings. Once the door was unlocked, Mrs. Hughes went inside. The man lifted the wrapped quilt, his wife helping support it, and the two followed Mrs. Hughes in. "Do we need to go in?" Diss asked. "Yes," Karen answered. "If the work of art isn't Mrs. Hughes, then it must be someone else." Karen still stood firm in his judgment, and the tightly shut doors of the crematorium earlier were proof enough that something was amiss. Three parties: Mrs. Hughes walked ahead, calling out Old Darcy's name as she went. Behind her followed the couple carrying the elderly woman's body. And behind them were Karen and Diss. At last, they all arrived before the glass partition of the incineration room. The door to the incineration room stood open, and there was no one inside. "Please cremate my mother first," the man said. "I need to find my worker!" Mrs. Hughes snapped. She was furious because she realized the furnace was hot, which meant an enormous waste of fuel. "Old Darcy! Old Darcy!" Karen, meanwhile, noticed the counter up ahead—or more precisely, the urns on top of it. The last time he had visited, the urns had been neatly arranged beside their price tags. Right now, however, the urns were stacked neatly like building blocks—not in a pyramid, but in an upright rectangle. Furthermore, the urns were placed on their sides, meaning their lids faced outward rather than upward. Karen stepped forward. His gaze fell upon the bottom-left corner. Reaching out, he grasped the clasped lid of an urn and pulled it open. "Ahhhhhh!!!!" The woman shrieked. "Ah!" The quilt slipped from the man's hands, and his mother rolled out of the bedding. "Good heavens!" Mrs. Hughes clapped a hand over her mouth. Diss quietly moved a step closer. Inside the urn Karen had just opened lay... a foot. A bloody foot. What was more, wedged between the toes was a price tag marked at 1,500 lubi. Karen opened the urn directly above it; inside was a knee. It felt like opening blind boxes, only with rather less mystery. Karen reached up, grasped the lid of the uppermost urn, and pulled it off. Inside the top urn was a head. Old Darcy's head. And in Old Darcy's mouth was a price tag marked at 10,000 lubi. Old Darcy had been dismembered. After being cut apart, his pieces had been placed into urns, and then, like toy building blocks, Old Darcy had been "assembled" back together. At that moment, Karen's eyes fell upon the desk angled slightly ahead, where a telephone rested. Walking over to the phone, Karen picked up the receiver. Turning back to face the counter of urns, he realized his current position was directly in front of the "reassembled" Old Darcy! Right here was the optimal vantage point. In Karen's vision, a black silhouette seemed to materialize. The figure had originally stood with hands clasped in front of him, admiring the blocks he had just finished assembling. Then, the telephone beside him began to ring. He frowned slightly, not answering. Soon, the phone rang a second time. This time, he picked up the receiver: "You're interrupting my artistic creation..."